The New ‘Do

Now that my parents are safely on their way to Boston and thus out of internet communication range until they see me tonight (You cut your hair? AGAIN?!? Why? Well, sure I like it, it’s just so…short), I thought I would give everyone the update on my current styling selection. How is it different? I’m not really sure. Do you like it? Again, I don’t really know yet. It definitely feels…funky.

The most obvious change is a lightening of the back of my head. Stanley the stylist razored it so that the underneath layers wouldn’t be weighted by lots of other hair on top, allowing the bottom part to curl a little. I think that’s working, but it’s really hard for me to objectively guage the curliness of the hair on the back of my head. I feel myself looking down alot. That could also be because I don’t really know how to type and I need to watch my fingers, but don’t tell my mom. Just say it’s a ‘new haircut head imbalance’. That sounds almost medical, as if it’s not my fault.

There are probably other changes as well that I’m not aware of yet. He did take a bit off the front, but mostly wanted to leave that curl intact. I feel like sometime soon the rising curls and the old ones are gonna have a fisticuffs, but I’m not sure who will come out the victor. I’m not sure yet who I’m even rooting for. Still, the new experience is to be valued. I haven’t had my hair cut by someone other than myself since that time in China they gave me the ‘mushroom’ style. I had to go home and fix it myself and just live with it really short for awhile. This style is nothing like that disaster.

Really, the whole new experience is due to Mike. He’s always encouraging me to try new things, and thinks it would be nice for me to try and new style, or do more ‘girl things’. So here’s to that. Hopefully this new experience will be one of the grow – to – love variety.

Alex said,

sedgehammer said,

No about the brain. As for the getting back to you, I will eventually get to it. Really. There is something to be said against the isolationism of the way the brain is considered, and something else about the impossibility of using science to prove something that is not concrete, making the argument that ‘there’s no evidence of a mind different from the brain’ circular, the ‘evidence’ of brain damage affecting all part of the mental experience likewise. But I’ll leave off of that until I have thought things through for myself and done more research.

sedgehammer said,

First off, the brain is only the major part of your nervous system, not all of it. Second, existence without your brain is impossible to prove. It is also impossible to disprove. To eliminate the possibility of existence after death, or ‘without brain’, is unacceptable to me.

Alex said,

I did hedge by including the rest of the nervous system, but it doesn’t change the main focus of the the body/mind or body/soul question. Here’s how I was thinking about it earlier: if the soul or the mind exist somewhere else or somehow separate from the body, then it should be possible for a person to change (e.g. in their mind or soul) without there being any physical impact. It should still be noticeable to other people; they would have some knowledge of the person’s mind and could tell it had changed. But no fMRI or whatever would be able to detect a difference if you compared before and after scans. This is the same kind of ‘evidence’ as the sun coming up every morning: it’s true until it doesn’t happen. But given that, much like the sun, thousands and thousands of brain scans have been run and there’s always a difference, and usually a fairly predictable one, I don’t see any reason to think that a scan tomorrow will show evidence of the mind. So I think at the ‘the sun will rise tomorrow’ level of evidence, the question has been answered.

Shannon said,

Shelly said,

Me too! Pictures! Until you send me pictures I will envision that you have a WATER PRETZEL on the back of your head. What is a water pretzel you might ask. Who knows you came up with it. WATER PRETZEL oh yeah WATER PRETZEL

sedgehammer said,

Two things. First, you’re talking about a noticeable change in a person in which we just happen to have brain scans of before and after the change. I would guess, though I’m not sure, that such scans aren’t typically performed across the general populace day to day. I know I haven’t had my brain scanned recently, but that’s just me. And I’m sure there must be experiments where control subjects are brain scanned and changes are noticed both in the scan and in personality. But I am initially skeptical of your thousands of brain scans. Second, I could be just repeating old wives’ tales, but isn’t it true that personality change is hard? That most people find it impossible to change their habits? If so, wouldn’t it require a major disaster or trauma or other incident to affect one of these behavioral changes you’re talking about? I would then posit that such a trauma would necessarily impact the whole of experience, both the mind and brain, rather than being just limited to one.

Sisters – Mike is photoing as we speak. To be posted shortly, I assure you. I am not a pretzel.